


My Blood Was Built From Crackling Lights

by geckoholic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Organized Crime, Robot/Human Relationships, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 21:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15715038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: For once, the raid is truly a surprise.





	My Blood Was Built From Crackling Lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



> Written to fit your request for _hurt/comfort after/during a shoot-out, the mob boss is desperate to find a space part to bring her robot back to full consciousness_ , albeit with slight changes. I hope it pleases!
> 
> Beta-read by scribblemyname. Thank you!! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Title is from "Life On Earth" by Snow Patrol.

For once, the raid is truly a surprise. Several officers in the district police headquarters receive handsome monthly _donations_ to keep Kayla informed about such things and make sure her businesses stay out of the spotlight. She'll have to make some inquiries, later, find out who fucked this one up and teach them a lesson. Depending on what the raid cops find, heads might roll. Literally. Kayla doesn't take kindly to betrayal, nor does she forgive failure. Most of all, she condemns someone risking the lives of those under her command. 

The situation escalates quickly. As they tend to do, the district police conducts its raids to a full house, late at night, scaring away as many customers as possible. The club erupts into a panicked flurry of activity, the police busting doors, customers trying to run out without having to give their data, and hosts and hostesses attempting to slip out of the back doors lest they get arrested and spend a few days in a cell until Kayla manages to negotiate for their release. 

And that could have been all: some legal trouble, some lost patrons, a slight dent in Kayla's bottom line. But raids like these tend to strip the nerves raw on both ends, nervous and cowardly cops on one side, over-eager lowlifes with loose trigger fingers on the other. Kayla's own men are instructed to de-escalate and get the club's personnel to safety, but her clientele has different motives. Weapons are frowned upon in her clubs. That doesn't always mean she can make sure no one carries any. Those aren't obedient bankers and their well-manicured trophy wives. Kayla deals within the underbelly of the district, men and women that keep weapons on their person while they sleep or shower, and yes, definitely when they visit an edgy night club. 

The first shot nearly gets lost amongst the music and the yelling. The second commands more attention, the noise having gone down somewhat, word spreading that someone _shot a gun_ , and from that point forward all bets are off. Bullets rain down every which way, the district police shooting at everyone that moves in a way they don't like, and a wild mix of patrons and mobsters firing back because that's what you do in a shootout and most of the people in here find themselves in situations like that at least once a month. 

Kayla curses and ducks behind the bar – she carries knives, hidden within various parts of her attire, but she doesn't like guns – and breathes a small breath of relief when she feels a hand on the back of her head only seconds later, guiding her down, and the weight of another body covering her own. She'd lost sight of Lisa, but the robot, saved from a scrapyard and recommissioned as her personal bodyguard, never strays far from her side. Her warmth, artificial and slightly alien and yet so soothingly familiar, envelops Kayla and infuses her with a feeling of safety, of comfort, amidst the rising chaos. It lifts slightly, for seconds at a time, as Lisa fires back, never needing a gun, the weaponry embedded in her limbs and always ready. 

And then, out of the blue, a bullet that hits too close. Kayla can all but feel the minute change in the air and hear the tell-tale humming noise as it whirrs past hear head, and she turns her head just in time to notice one of her own men, a new guy on his third or fourth shift, taking off towards the cops at the door. 

A traitor. Kayla bristles at the thought. She vows to hunt him down across the entire district, personally eviscerate him, kill him slowly and then deliver his body to the district police's door step. She never forgets a face. She'll find him. 

For a few seconds, rage fills all her senses like a bright flame fanned into a wild forest fire, and so it takes her a moment to notice that Lisa's protective weight is gone from her back, that the robot lies beside her, still and frozen, her unnaturally green eyes staring at her, unseeing and empty. Dark brown fluid trickles down from her forehead, from a wound at her temple. Kayla knows Lisa's blueprints by heart, has fixed her up herself any number of times, and she immediately knows the traitor hit a vital processing hub near her central hard drive. 

She curses, chances a look over the counter, and takes out a small handgun from a secret drawer underneath the fridge. She hefts Lisa's body over her shoulder, raises the gun, and runs for the nearest exit, half-ducked, firing incessantly and everything that moves. Even after she's outside, she keeps running, doesn't stop until she reaches one of the delivery vans outside. She hauls Lisa into the passenger seat and doesn't bother to check for the right key; hot-wiring a car is one of the skills she picked up at an age where most kids have only just learned to ride a bike. 

 

***

 

Kayla sends off a few quick messages from her wrist tablet while she drives, reminding her guys of emergency protocols and safehouses, but mostly her attention is on Lisa. After a few minutes, Lisa starts babbling. Nonsensical strings of random syllables for the most part, an eerie side effect as her brain tries – and repeatedly fails – to reboot itself despite the injured processing hub. She sounds scared, confused, unable to run a diagnostic on herself. She blinks, mouth opening on a plea her brain can’t form right now, and Kayla reaches out to hold her hand. The most humane thing would be to turn her off altogether. Kayla can’t make herself to start the process though; with an injury like that, there’s no telling whether she’d be able to boot up again, and Ifre might need to see her reactions and review active logs in order to assess the damage.

No one knows if that’s her real name. No one knows what she really looks like. Ifre is one of the best unregistered tech doctors in the district, and she prefers to work anonymously. Some people suspect that she might lead a double life, that she works for the district government and makes money off her black market customers on the side, but Kayla doesn’t buy that. Government agents don’t _choose_ to live in the district. It’s Kayla’s home and she wouldn’t want to go anywhere else, but it’s dangerous. Unsafe. The district is a jungle, and government agents usually aren’t in a hurry to settle down here. Too many predators; too many wounded victims, left with little more than the bare essentials and always trying to avoid the next set of sharp teeth. Kayla realized that long ago. She decided to become the wolf, rather than continue to exist as one of the lambs, no matter the cost.

The ramshackle old building that serves as Ifre’s shop and residence looms over the flat, newly erected warehouses that swarm the rest of the harbor district these days. It carries the remainders of an ancient neon logo, all that’s left the letters H and O, and even they’re hanging at odd angles. It’s been almost a century since they might last have glowed, before those who could afford the journey evacuated to other colonies. The district, this whole planet, now serves as some combination of slum and prison. The lines between the two are thin, however. Maybe they don’t exist at all – both the poor and the criminals are stuck here forever.

Kayla knocks on the barricaded front entrance, at the same time calling Ifre’s ID up on her wrist tablet and hailing her again and again and again. The sun is just coming up on the horizon, dipping the algae-invested ocean into a treacherous, warm, inviting, yellow light. Ifre must be asleep. Hell, everyone would be asleep at a time like this; it’s not like people here in the district have regular work schedules or any other reason to rise early. But Kayla doesn’t give up. She doesn’t keep track of how long it takes, but eventually Ifre answers her calls, her veiled face springing up in the holo display.

“The fuck do you want?” she snarls, but her eyes, the only part of her face that’s ever visible, soften when she takes in Kayla’s ruffled state. She must make quite the picture, disheveled and exhausted, a heavy contrast to her usual tightly controlled, cool persona.

“Lisa,” says Kayla, and it’s so hard to keep hold of a single thought, to think through the frantic worry. “She was shot.”

Ifre's face disappears from the display, and moments later the door to the hidden side entrance clicks open and Ifre steps out. “Where is she?” 

“In the car,” Kayla says, and her own voice sounds wrong, coarse and thin, like she's yelled all day or cried for an hour. She raises her hand and touches the skin beneath her eyes, and indeed, it comes away wet. Embarrassed, she rubs her eyes with her knuckles, trying to pass it off as exhaustion. 

Ifre doesn't seem to care either way. She's already marching ahead to the car, opens the passenger side door and hovers over the injured robot's body. “She's badly damaged. Are you sure you don't want to repla-”

“No,” Kayla interrupts her, using the same low and dangerous tone she uses for enemies and wayward mobsters. “I don't want another robot. I want her. Fix her. I don't care what it costs. You know I'm good for it.” 

Looking back and forth between Kayla and Lisa, Ifre frowns. She gingerly touches the wound again, probably weighing up the amount of credits she can charge if she succeeds against the wrath she might invite upon her person if she fails. Kayla is about to reassure here that she won't take any action should Lisa die, other than seeking revenge from those responsible for the raid, for the bullet, for hurting her in the first place. 

But she doesn't have to make any such reassurances. Ifre sighs and waves for Kayla to approach the van. “Come on, then. Help me bring her down into my workshop.” 

 

*** 

 

The waiting is pure torture. Kayla paces the shop without pause, and Ifre knows better than to tell her to sit down and stay calm. Ifre is also too busy for complaints of the sort, focused entirely on the difficult work she's doing in rewiring Lisa's brain, attaching the circuits of the new processing hub to the existing system. Operations like this aren't common; back when the service robots were created, they were disposable. If one broke, the owner bought a new one. That still applies in the colonies, of course, but they've been out of distribution to Earth for decades now. 

That's not the reason Kayla wants Lisa saved, though. She found the robot ten years ago, in the back of a whorehouse she'd taken over, fiddled with her for months until she was able to reboot her, and Lisa hasn't left her side for a single day ever since. Of course, that's part of her programming. Kayla knows that. But the conversations they had, the way Lisa laughs at her jokes, curls around her at night, looks at her in the morning – Lisa is more than a bunch of parts and wires underneath artificial skin. Lisa is a _person_. And to Kayla, no one is more important. 

She's irreplaceable. 

Kayla freezes when her name rings through the workshop, previously dead silent except for the noise of Ifre's fiddling, in a small but unmistakable voice. 

“Lisa?” she says, and here eyes meet Ifre's, wide with silent questions, begging for confirmation. Maybe this is just a test, maybe they're not done yet, maybe that's instinct, duty, memory, rather than recognition. 

But Ifre smiles, and Lisa turns her head, still attached to Ifre's tools in places, and smiles. “Kayla,” she says again, this time stronger, curling around her name in a familiar way. “Are you okay?” 

And Kayla runs a hand down her face, snorts a laugh. Of course Lisa would inquire after her first thing after waking up from a lethal injury. She walks to the worktable in a few long strides, leans over, brushing the hair away from Lisa's neck while carefully avoiding the delicate fresh wiring exposed by the open plate at the side of her head, and smiles back at her friend, her protector, her... everything. There is no better way to put it. 

“Yeah,” she says, crouching down to rest her forehead against the cool edge of the worktable and close her eyes, taking a slow breath. “I'm okay now.”


End file.
